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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE LAST DAYS OF 
JESUS CHRIST 



THE LAST DAYS 

OF 

JESUS CHRIST 



BY 



LYMAN ABBOTT 




New York 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 



*v 



COPYBIGHT, 1918 

By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



MAR -9 1918 

printed in the United States of Hmerica 

©GI.A498510 



THE 1/AST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



draper 

Father, we thank Thee for the revelation 
Thou hast made of Thine infinite and un- 
speakable nature in the speaking and finite 
nature of Jesus Christ, our elder brother. We 
thank Thee that Thou hast come to earth and 
lived in human flesh and walked incognito 
among men, hiding Thyself that Thou 
mightst be revealed, descending that Thou 
mightst be exalted, sorrowing that Thou 
mightst add to the eternal joy of all Thy 
children and enrich Thine own joy — the joy 
of self-sacrifice, the joy of a suffering love. 
Thou perpetually incarnate God, through Je- 
sus Christ Thy Son our Saviour, we come to 
Thee, not thinking that Thou art afar off 
and needest a mediator, not thinking that 
Thou art like the God of Israel of old, hiding 
Thyself between the horns of the altar, unto 
whom only the great High Priest can come, 
and the Children of Israel only unto the 
Priest. Through Jesus Christ we come to 
Thee, because through Jesus Christ Thou 
comest to us ; to the window we come, because 
through the window the eternal sunlight 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

streams into the room; to him we come, be- 
cause he is Thy word, Thy smile, Thine eyes, 
Thy very self revealing Thyself through the 
mask and veil of humanity. We could not 
look upon Thee unveiled and live; we are not 
large enough to see Thee; and so, dear God, 
we think — yea, we do know and believe — that 
Thou hast come to earth and seemed to belit- 
tle Thyself that we might see Thee, and so 
hast added to the glory that could not be 
added to and made more infinite the in- 
finity of love. 



LIFE 

CHRIST WITH HIS 
ENEMIES IN THE TEMPLE 



[2] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



The God that to the fathers 

Revealed His holy will 
Has not the world forsaken, 

He's with the children still. 
Then envy not the twilight 

That glimmered on their way; 
Look up, and see the dawning 

That broadens into day. 

'T was but far off, in vision, 

The fathers' eyes could see 
The glory of the kingdom, — 

The better time to be. 
To-day we see fulfilling 

The dreams they dreamt of old; 
While nearer, ever nearer, 

Rolls on the age of gold. 

With trust in God's free spirit, — 

The ever-broadening ray 
Of truth that shines to guide us 

Along our forward way, — 
Let us to-day be faithful 

As were the brave of old, 
Till we, their work completing, 

Bring in the age of gold! 

Minot J. Savage. 



THE I4AST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [3] 



Tuesday, the fourth day of April, a. d. 34, 
was by far the most eventful in the life of 
Christ, for on the evening of that day and 
for that day's utterances, not on the eve- 
ning of his more formal trial nor for any 
word of blasphemy that he uttered, was he 
condemned to die. 

Throughout his ministry Jesus in his treat- 
ment of the religionists of his day generally 
followed his counsel to his disciples. "Let 
them alone," he said; "they be blind leaders 
of the blind." This morning he pursued a 
different course. He went early to the Tem- 
ple, and there in the outer court challenged 
the ecclesiastical and theological teachers of 
the nation. History records no greater act of 
courage. It was as if Luther had gone to 
Rome to preach the doctrines of the Ref- 
ormation in the court before St. Peter's. On 
this day Jesus was no longer a teacher; he 
was a fighter. He did not avoid controversy; 
he provoked it. Warnings of coming doom, 
which had heretofore been generally confined 
to confidential discourses with his disciples, 
he now publicly repeated. He attacked the 
hierarchy in its headquarters. He declared 



[4] THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST 

that the religion of the Pharisees was one of 
pretense; that they were mere actors on a 
stage; that the publicans and harlots would 
go into the kingdom of God before them; 
that the Jewish nation was no longer the 
favored people of God and would never be- 
come the ruler of the world ; that the present 
generation, by slaying the Messiah, would 
fulfill the iniquity of their fathers; that the 
stone which they refused would fall upon 
them and grind them to powder; that their 
Holy City would be utterly destroyed and 
they themselves scattered far and wide 
among the Gentiles whom they despised. 
The instructions of the day ended with 
three parables of divine judgment given to 
his awed and perplexed disciples. In one of 
these God's judgment was compared to the 
fate which overtook five foolish bridesmaids 
on a wedding night. 

The Jewish wedding day was characterized 
by a curious ceremonial. The bridegroom 
came at night with his companions to bring 
his bride from her home — possibly a sur- 
vival of ruder times when the bride was cap- 
tured in a raid and became the reward of 
her warrior husband's courage. Now, how- 
ever, she awaited in pleasing anticipation his 
coming, and her bridesmaids waited with 
her. These bridesmaids were torch-bearers — 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [5] 

their torches, cup-like vessels filled with oil, 
a wick floating on the top. Jesus told the 
story of a wedding in which five of the 
bridesmaids thought it enough to have lighted 
their lamps, while five believed in prepared- 
ness and had ready a supply for their lamps 
when the oil in them was burned out. The 
foolish bridesmaids with their burned-out 
lamps were shut out from the procession and 
the feast which followed; only the wise 
bridesmaids shared in the joys of the wed- 
ding. 

In vain does opportunity invite us if we 
are not ready to receive it. No splendor of 
the past suffices to give glory to the present. 

I can remember when the admonition, Pre- 
pare to meet thy God, filled me with dread. 
It paralyzed my powers, forbade my ordi- 
nary activities, seemed to call me away from 
life to meditation, prayer, self-cleansing. 
Jehovah seemed to me a Judge whose exact- 
ing justice was unmixed with charity > who 
discerned in me the secret sins I did not 
myself discern, who was of inflaming con- 
suming purity, whom I dared not meet. How 
to prepare to meet him I knew not. 

To-day Prepare to meet thy God is to 
me one of the most inspiring summons any 
literature sacred or secular contains. He 
meets me at unexpected times, in unex- 



[6] THE LAST DAYS OF JBSUS CHRIST 

pected places, and always brings with him 
a glad surprise — even when it is an awe- 
inspiring surprise. He comes bringing gifts, 
and not the least of them some new oppor- 
tunity to share with him the burdens he is 
bearing, the service he is rendering, the work 
he is doing to bring about in this world the 
Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. 
He comes as Spring comes to the earth with 
a call to a new life; as the babe comes to the 
mother with a call to the joys of a new 
consecration to love. He comes as Christ 
came to the fishermen at the Sea of Galilee 
with the promise, I will make you fishers of 
men. He comes as he came to Paul when 
he called him to be a preacher of the Glad 
Tidings to the Gentiles; as he came to 
Luther when he met him on Pilate's stair- 
case; as he came to Abraham Lincoln when 
he called him to New York to define in that 
ever memorable Cooper Union speech the 
issue which confronted a puzzled Nation; as 
he came to General Armstrong when he 
called him to lead the way to the completed 
redemption of the Negro race. 

God comes to Nations summoning them to 
a national duty. Each new service ren- 
dered brings a call to a greater service; each 
new victory brings a call to a greater battle. 
Alas! for the Nation which cannot read the 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [7] 

signs of the times; which cannot see the op- 
portunity which the God of Nations sets be- 
fore it; alas! for the Nation if its glory all 
lies buried in the graves of its ancestors. 

The Jews prided themselves on being the 
children of Abraham. But to a faithless gen- 
eration it profits nothing that they can look 
back to an ancestor who was full of faith 
and dared a great adventure. It is not our 
glory but our shame that we are the descend- 
ants of men who fought at Bunker Hill and 
suffered at Valley Forge if we have not their 
courageous patriotism. That they founded a 
Republic conceived in liberty and dedicated 
to the proposition that all men are created 
equal avails us nothing if we have not the 
self-denying courage necessary to protect that 
Republic from corruption within and enemies 
without. Are we prepared to keep burning 
in 1918 the lamp they lighted in 1776? If 
not, we are the unworthy descendants of a 
worthy ancestry and will find the door of the 
future barred in our faces. 

God comes to His church, offers afresh His 
guiding inspiring spirit, calls it afresh to its 
allotted service, and gives it afresh its mes- 
sage, and to each age a message fitted for the 
needs of that age. In the first century great 
Pan was dead. The pagan world had grown 
weary of its gods and goddesses. It had grown 



[8] THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST 

weary of a religion and a priesthood which 
demanded much and offered nothing. It was 
ready to welcome a religion which brought 
the Glad Tidings that there is but one God, 
who demands of his children righteousness 
and demands nothing else, and who is the 
Father, the Friend, the Helper of the whole 
human race. In the sixteenth century the 
world was growing weary of a church which 
had become corrupted by its wealth and its 
temporal power, and had lost in the cathe- 
drals the spirit which had actuated it in the 
catacombs, and the world was ready to wel- 
come the Glad Tidings that the gifts of God 
are not for sale, but like the sun and the rain 
are freely given to all who will receive them. 
In the twentieth century the message given 
to the Church is "One is your Master — Christ 
— and all ye are brethren." God brings men 
of every Nation, tribe and tongue from every 
quarter of the globe, and sets them here in 
America at our church doors, that we may 
give them this message. How to unite these 
people of various habits and traditions in one 
American citizenship is the political problem 
of the Nation. How to unite these people of 
hostile creeds in one catholic faith more 
spiritual and, therefore, more catholic than 
any creed is the problem of the Christian 
Church. Is it fulfilling its mission? 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [9] 

The world judges the Church by its pres- 
ent service, not by its past history, and the 
world judges it aright. If the Church has 
to look to a historic past for its glory, that 
glory is its shame. The lamp which a previ- 
ous generation lighted furnishes only smoke 
unless the present generation keeps alive the 
spirit of the fathers. The orthodoxy of the 
sixteenth century does not make the twen- 
tieth-century Church sound in the faith; the 
piety of the first century does not make the 
twentieth-century Church a living Church. 
And only a living Church can be a Church 
of the living God. The father may live in 
the sons, but the sons cannot live in the fa- 
thers ; and it is quite immaterial whether they 
are Puritan fathers or ante-Nicene fathers. 

To every wedding Christ eomes as he came 
to the wedding in Cana of Galilee. To every 
bride and groom a new book of life is offered, 
a new door of opportunity stands ajar — op- 
portunity for love, service and sacrifice. 
Every new family may be and should be a 
type of the true social order. Every new 
parenthood should get its inspiration from 
the Father of whom every family in heaven 
and earth is named. 

But if love is only a new form of self- 
seeking, if happiness is the only prize per- 
ceived and sought for, the book of life re- 



[10] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

mains unopened, the door of opportunity is 
closed. Of the various escapes offered for 
unhappy marriages some are nostrums, some 
are palliatives. There is only one cure — 
love. They who keep their love aflame only 
during the honeymoon add to the bitterness 
of the present by their memory of the past. 
Happy they who keep up the spirit of their 
courtship during half a century of wedded 
life. Happy they who keep love always 
lighted in their home, for they find the joy 
of the golden wedding more satisfying, 
though it be less exuberant, than the joy of 
the bridal day. 

To every youth God gives two lights — 
idealism and hope. I like to speak to college 
students because through their faces I see 
these inward lights shining. Too often, ten 
years later life has extinguished them. Why ? 
All his troubles, difficulties, enemies could not 
extinguish these lights in Paul. "We glory 
in tribulations," he said, "knowing that tribu- 
lation worketh patience, and patience experi- 
ence, and experience hope." The experience 
of life should feed the light of hope, not ex- 
tinguish it. His ideals grew clearer and 
nearer as the years went by. It was as life 
was drawing to its close that he wrote to his 
friends, "I press forward toward the goal for 
the prize of the upward calling of God in 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [11] 

Christ Jesus." No man ever need lose the 
ideals and hopes of his youth. 

I cut from a recent issue of the New York 
Evening Sun the following paragraph: 

Young Paget knew he could not live long. 
Hands and arms were paralyzed and he en- 
tered classes in a wheeled chair. Said Pro- 
fessor Erskine: 

He resolved to spend his hour richly, pursuing 
large plans, as one whose hope was in the everlast- 
ing and who though not permitted to enjoy his 
share of time was at home in eternity. It was his 
wish to prepare himself for important service, 
however short the opportunity might prove. . . . 

No man should allow himself ever to lose 
the ideals and hopes of his youth, for they 
are the secret of perpetual youth and per- 
petual youth is an essential condition of use- 
fulness. The octogenarian who lives only in 
the memory of the past will never find an op- 
portunity for useful service for himself nor 
be able to aid his grandchildren to find one. 
"Old men for counsel, young men for action," 
is a wise motto. His counsel is priceless who 
gives younger men the lesson of his own 
blunders ; but his counsel is valueless if all he 
can say is, "We did not do so in our time." 

God comes to the individual, comes in an 
experience so novel that he thinks of it as a 



[12] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

new birth. H. G. Wells has in a characteris- 
tic paragraph described this experience: 

The moment may come while we are alone in 
the darkness, under the stars, or while we walk 
by ourselves or in a crowd, or while we sit and 
muse. It may come upon the sinking ship or in 
the tumult of the battle. There is no saying when 
it may not come to us ... . But after it has come 
our lives are changed, God is with us and there 
is no more doubt of God. 

Oh! if it only were always so. But it is 
not always so. The doubts of God come back 
again. He seems to have left us ; or have we 
left Him? The light and joy of the new life 
go out. Religion becomes a memory. God 
becomes an hypothesis. The lamp has gone 
out. It gives no light, only smoke. Faith 
ceases to be a living experience and becomes 
a creed. What was once alive is now a fossil. 

What shall we do? If the wheat planted in 
the Spring brings forth no harvest in the 
Fall; a recollection of the Spring sowing will 
not furnish Winter food. Better plough the 
weeds under and begin again. The Christian 
who can find nothing better to sing than 

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed, 
How sweet their memory still! 

had better forget them and be reconverted. 
He whose only reason for thinking that he is 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [13] 

a Christian is that he "got religion'' in his 
youth had better forget that he got it and 
try again. 

It is a poor present which shines only by 
the reflected glory of a past. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [15] 



draper 

Father, who sent Thy Son into the world to 
be the light of the world, lighten our darkness 
we beseech Thee. We, Thy children, know 
neither ourselves nor the life that lies before 
us. Prepare us for what Thou art preparing 
for us. Keep us from the ambition that 
covets great tasks. Keep us from the cow- 
ardice that evades the tasks to which Thou 
dost call us. Keep us from despair because 
of our failures. Keep us from self-conceit 
because of our successes. By Thy companion- 
ship equip us for the high adventure of life. 
To every call of duty may we respond, Lo ! 
I come to do Thy will, O God. Ever forget- 
ting what we have left behind, may we press 
forward in eager response to Thine upward 
calling in Christ Jesus. Amen. 



LOVE 

CHRIST WITH HIS 
FRIENDS IN THE HOME 



[18] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew 
back, 
Guilty of dust and sin. 
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow 
slack 
From my first entrance in, 
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning 
If I lack'd anything. 

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here." 

Love said, "You shall be he." 
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, 

I cannot look on Thee." 
Love took my hand and smiling did reply, 

"Who made the eyes but I ?" 

"Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let 
my shame 
Go where it doth deserve." 
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore 
the blame?" 
"My dear, then I will serve." 
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste 
my meat." 
So I did sit and eat. 

George Herbert. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST * [19]| 



From his conflict with his enemies in the 
Temple during his last eventful week Jesus 
sought at night repose, generally outside the 
city walls; sometimes probably sleeping on 
the hillside with his burnoose wrapped about 
him; once we know in a garden of olives; 
once in a house of a friend in the neighbor- 
ing village of Bethany; once in the house of 
an unknown friend within the city. The 
name, condition, character of this friend are 
all unknown. Jesus probably had many de- 
voted friends even in Jerusalem whose friend- 
ship in that perilous hour was carefully con- 
cealed except from the elect few. This un- 
known friend had offered him a room where 
he could observe the Passover supper with his 
disciples. Even they apparently knew noth- 
ing of their host. 

The record which we possess of the Mas- 
ter's parting words to his disciples was prob- 
ably written down by disciples of John, as 
his amanuenses, more than half a century 
after the event. To the literalist this will 
seem a great misfortune. To me these in- 
comparable words are not less sacred because 
they represent the imperishable memory of 



[20] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

the one disciple whose courageous devotion to 
his Mas'er kept him at the cross until his 
Master's death — the disciple whom Jesus in 
that hour adopted as his son and to whom he 
intrusted the future care of his own widowed 
and heart-pierced mother. 

It was characteristic of Jesus that he made 
this hour of gloom the most luminous hour of 
his life's teaching, that he did not seek com- 
fort from his disciples but gave comfort to 
them, and strengthened the courage of his 
own faith by imparting courage to their per- 
plexed and troubled hearts. For the spirit 
always grows by imparting : we add to our 
courage by encouraging the timid, inspire our 
hopes by ministering to the disheartened, and 
make clearer our vision by telling others what 
we have seen. 

I shall not attempt a paraphrase of Christ's 
monologue. My ambition is humbler; it is to 
translate it into terms of every-day human ex- 
perience. 

His opening sentence gives two keys to un- 
lock the door to the "life that really is." 
"Have faith in God." How can we have faith 
in him whom we have not seen and cannot 
see? Show us the Father and it sufficeth us. 
If you cannot have faith in God, then "Have 
faith in me." 

Faith in God is not the door to Christian 



THE I/AST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [21] 

faith; Christian faith is the door to faith in 
God. It is not easy in a world of sorrow, 
temptation, and sin to have faith in a good 
God who made and governs the world. But 
it is not difficult to have faith in a good man 
who confronts danger with courage, endures 
sorrow with patience, encounters temptation 
without thought of yielding, and bears the 
burdens of sins not his own without murmur- 
ing. Who can do other than believe in such 
a one ? Not in ecclesiastical definitions about 
him, but in his character, in his personality, 
in the worth-whileness of his life. Faith in 
Abraham Lincoln has inspired the American 
people and made them what they would not 
have been but for Abraham Lincoln. Faith 
in Jesus Christ has made the world what it 
never could have been without Jesus Christ. 
This is the beginning of Christian faith: it 
inspires in us the desire to encounter our dan- 
gers with his courage, to bear our burdens 
witn his patience, to meet our temptations 
with his unyielding resolve, and to bear the 
consequences of others' sins with his suffering 
love. 

But this is only the beginning. This hu- 
man life is a reflection of the divine life. Sir 
Oliver Lodge has put this second step in the 
Christian faith with beautiful simplicity : 



•y? 



[22] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

Undoubtedly the Christian idea of God is the 
simple one. Overpoweringly and appallingly sim- 
ple is the notion presented to us by the orthodox 
Christian churches: 

A babe born of poor parents, born in a stable 
among cattle because there was no room for them 
in the village inn — no room for them in the inn — 
what a master touch ! Revealed to shepherds. Re- 
ligious people inattentive. Royalty ignorant, or 
bent on massacre. A glimmering perception, ac- 
cording to one noble legend, attained in the Far 
East — where also similar occurrences have been 
narrated. Then the child growing into a peasant 
youth, brought up to a trade. At length a few 
years of itinerant preaching; flashes of miraculous 
power and insight. And then a swift end: set 
upon by the religious people his followers overawed 
and scattered, himself tried as a blasphemer, 
flogged, and finally tortured to death. 

Simplicity most thorough and most strange! In 
itself it is not unique. Such occurrences seem in- 
evitable to highest humanity in an unregenerate 
world; but who, without inspiration, would see in 
them a revelation of the nature of God? The 
life of Buddha, the life of Joan of Arc, are not 
thus regarded. Yet the Christian revelation is clear 
enough and true enough if our eyes are open and 
if we care to read and accept the simple record 
which, whatever its historical value, is all that has 
been handed down to us. 



Believe in me, Jesus says to me. Yes, 
I reply; I can believe in thee. Even 
Renan, even John Stuart Mill, could believe 
in thee. Believe that the Father is in me. 
Yes; I can believe that the Father is in him. 
The Church tells me that the Father is all- 
powerful. Perhaps. But I do not reverence 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [23] 

power. The Church tells me that the Father 
is all-wise. Perhaps. But I do not reverence 
wisdom. Jesus tells me that the Father is all 
love, and his life tells me what love means. 
And I reverence love. Whether it is all-pow- 
erful or not, whether it is all-wise or not, I 
reverence love. Even if I were a Persian 
and believed in two gods, an Ormuzd and an 
Ahriman, a good god and a bad god, and be- 
lieved that in this world they were in a battle 
on which the destiny of the universe de- 
pended, even if I did not know and could not 
even guess which was to win, I would rever- 
ence the good god and fight the bad one. Even 
if I thought the drama of Palestine fore- 
shadowed the end of the world drama, that 
the ambitious Caiaphas and the cowardly 
Pilate and the treacherous Judas would be 
victors and love would be crucified, I should 
still reverence love, and I hope I should dare 
to take my place with the mother of the 
pierced heart, not with the triumphant foes. 
Yes ; I can believe that the Father is in Jesus 
His Son. 

But this is not the end of the Christian 
faith. There is a third stage. "I will not 
leave you orphans; I will come to you. Yet 
a little while, and the world seeth me no more ; 
but ye see me, because I am living and ye 



[24] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

shall live also." An orphan is not one who 
is fatherless. He had a father, whom mem- 
ory recalls from the past. He will have a 
father, whom hope anticipates meeting in the 
future. But now he is without a father. 

There are many orphaned Christians. They 
believe in a Father who was formerly active 
in the world, about whom they read in the 
Bible. They believe in a Father who will ap- 
pear in the great day of the future to judge 
the world. But now ? Now they are without 
a Father. Inspiration and revelation they 
think have ceased; no wonder, then, that 
prayer ceases. Why go on forever talking 
to a god who gives no answer? God in his- 
tory ? Yes ; in past history. In Jewish wars ; 
but not in the European war. In humanity? 
Yes. In Hebrew prophets; but not in twen- 
tieth-century prophets. Walking with Enoch, 
but with no one now; speaking to Abraham, 
but to no one now ; dwelling in the Christ, but 
dwelling with no one now. A silent God; an 
absentee God; a forgetting and a forgotten 
God; what Carlyle has well called "an hypo- 
thetical God." Over against this common ex- 
perience of to-day I put Harnack's confession 
of his faith: "Not only in the beginning was 
the Word, the Word that was at once deed 
and life; but the living, resolute, indomitable 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [25] 

Word — namely, the person—has always been 
a power in history, along with and above the 
power of circumstance." 

This is my faith. I believe in a Universal 
Presence, a Great Companion, a living Christ 
forever incarnate in the hearts and lives of 
his friends, living now in the world with 
mightier and wider influence and in more inti- 
mate communion and companionship with his 
disciples than ever before, a living vine grow- 
ing from a little seed planted nineteen cen- 
turies ago and since then spreading over the 
whole earth, whose fruits are a peace which 
troubles cannot disturb and a joy which pains 
cannot destroy. The seed of this faith was 
given to me many years ago by John's report 
of the last discourse of Jesus to his disciples. 
It has grown since with the growing experi- 
ence of over half a century of Christian dis- 
cipleship. 

It is true I have never had the ecstatic vi- 
sions which I read of occasionally in the 
spiritual biographies of the mystics. Jesus 
has not promised such visions to any one. They 
may be real, but they are not normal. I 
doubt whether they conduce to the most 
Christlike living. At all events, they are not 
for me. I have no desire for them. George 
Croly has voiced for me my prayer: 



[26] THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST 

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, 
No sudden rending of the veil of clay, 

No angel visitant, no opening skies; 
But take the dimness of my soul away. 

Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh; 

Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear. 
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; 

Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer. 

I have never practiced the fastings, the 
flagellations, the denials of the body which 
some of the mystics seem to have thought es- 
sential to obtain their spiritual ecstasies. If 
personal fellowship with God is to be a natu- 
ral experience, the condition of enjoying it 
must be a natural condition. Jesus prescribes 
no other. Loyalty to him is the only condi- 
tion he prescribes. "If a man love me, he 
will keep my word; and my Father will love 
him, and we will come unto him, and make 
our abode with him." And lest any one 
should think this word which his disciples are 
to keep requires some mystical act of faith or 
supernatural act of self-denial, Jesus tells 
them what this word is: "This is my com- 
mandment, That ye love one another, as I 
have loved you." 

Love is the key to Christ's character; love 
is the secret of the Christ life; to love is to 
follow Christ. A life of asceticism, a life of 
retirement and meditation, is not the way to 



THE I.AST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [27] 

companionship with Christ. The way to com- 
panionship with Christ is a life like that of 
Jesus — a life of love, service, and sacrifice. 
And as to self-denial as a means for the puri- 
fication of the spirit, "Life itself, rightly 
lived, offers the best and most normal means 
of purification. Here, right at hand, in daily 
living, without fleeing to the desert or retreat- 
ing to the monastery, without the use of fast- 
ing or hair shirt, mortification or flagellation, 
in every-day duties and disciplines, lies the 
divinely ordained corrective of the flesh. 
Here is ample training for the spirit." x 

Faith in the life and character of Jesus 
Christ as a supreme example of a life worth 
living and a character worth having; faith in 
Jesus Christ as the supreme interpretation of 
a God to love and to obey ; and faith in Jesus 
Christ as a giver of life by his presence and 
companionship with those that love him and 
desire to be like him: — Such is the last mes- 
sage of Jesus to his disciples, or rather, as 
much of that message as one of his disciples 
has learned in his life experience. 

1 "Mysticism and Modern Life," by John Wright 
Buckham, p. 41. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [29] 



draper 

Father — who hast given us Thy Son to be 
our Comrade, sharing our joys and our sor- 
rows, our imperfect knowledge and our im- 
perfect strength, our trials and our tempta- 
tions, 'haring everything except our sins, we 
believe in him, in his life, his love, his mis- 
sion. Are we too venturesome if we dare to 
ask for ourselves what Thy Son has asked 
for us ? We are Thine : have us in Thy keep- 
ing. We ask not that Thou shouldest take us 
out of this sinning and sorrowing world; but, 
Father, give us the strength to share with 
Thy Son the burden of the world's sins and 
sorrows, that with him we may conquer the 
evil that is in the world. Dying, he has sent 
us into the world to carry on the work which 
Thou gavest to him and to us to do. By Thy 
truth make us holy and undefiled, as He was 
holy and undefiled. Abide in us as Thou didst 
abide in him, that we may be made perfect in 
him with Thee. Is he not still in the world, re- 
deeming the world ? Suffer us, though we are 
not yet holy and undefiled, to be with him in 
his great mission, understanding his glory be- 



[30] THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST 

cause we share it with him — the glory of his 
love, his service, and his sacrifice. And this 
we ask for his sake who is our Leader in the 
great campaign. Amen. 



CONSECRATION 

CHRIST WITH HIS 
GOD IN THE GARDEN 



[32] THE I/AST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



Into the woods my Master went,* 

Clean forspent, forspent, 
Into the woods my Master came, 

Forspent with love and shame. 
But the olives they were not blind to him ; 

The little green leaves were kind to him; 
The thorn-tree had a mind to him; 

When into the woods he came. 

Out of the woods my Master went, 

And he was well content. 
Out of the woods my Master came, 

Content with death and shame. 
When Death and Shame would woo him last, 

From under the trees they drew him last; 
'Twas on a tree they slew him — last 

When out of the woods he came. 

Sidney Lanier. 

* Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons, by whose 
courtesy the poem is here included. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [S3] 



The Old Testament prophets had foretold 
a new social and political order of the world 
in which war would cease and the weapons 
of warfare would be turned into tools of 
peaceful industry, in which liberty would be 
established and the only sanction for law 
necessary would be the authority of God, in 
which property would be more equitably di- 
vided and every man would sit under his own 
vine and fig tree, in which there would be uni- 
versal education and no man would need to 
teach his neighbor. The burden of Jesus' 
ministry was that this kingdom of God was 
at hand. He had come to inaugurate it, and 
his message was at first received by the com- 
mon people with great enthusiasm. 

But they received it with enthusiasm be- 
cause they did not understand it. The ex- 
pected emancipation from the Roman yoke; 
the establishment of a new and world-wide 
kingdom of which the Jewish nation would 
be the head; and that Jerusalem, not Rome, 
would be the mistress of the world. This 
dream of a Jewish empire was hopelessly 
wild and singularly visionary. Rome was a 
nation of soldiers. Her standing army num- 



[34] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

bered nearly half a million of men. The 
whole military force of Judaism proved no 
match for about thirty thousand of these 
men forty years later. Nor would the condi- 
tion of the world have been improved by any 
such change of masters. Rome was a better 
queen than Jerusalem would have been ; Pilate 
a better administrator than Caiaphas. 

Yet Judaism might have conquered Rome. 
Rome, strong in military power, was weak in 
moral ideas. Her heart was feeble ; only her 
muscles were strong. Her government was 
corrupt; bribery was universal and uncon- 
cealed. In the courts of justice gold was the 
plea of the wealthy, the passions of the popu- 
lace were the defense of the poor. Chastity 
and temperance were the common subjects of 
satire. The drama was supplanted by gladia- 
torial combats, and feasting and revelry, con- 
tinued through many days and nights, became 
banquets of death. Here, then, was Rome's 
weakest point, here Judaism's strong point. 
The religion of Rome provoked the derision 
of the wise by presenting for their adoration 
a host of sensual gods and goddesses ; the re- 
ligion of the Jews demanded reverence for 
one supreme and spiritual Jehovah. The 
Roman religion deduced the will of the gods 
from the chance flight of birds or the study 
of the entrails of the sacrificial victim; the 



THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST [35] 

Jewish religion pointed to the sublime enact- 
ments of Mount Sinai, the plain precepts of 
the prophets, and the moral maxims of the 
Book of Proverbs. Rome, regarding religion 
as a political instrument, left it to be regu- 
lated for the nation by the senate; Judaism, 
regarding it as an individual life, forbade 
any one from interfering between the soul 
and its God. 

But if this conquest of Rome was to be 
achieved by the Jewish people they must first 
win a conquest over themselves. They must 
revive the spiritual faith of their fathers, 
proclaimed, manifested, and illustrated by 
their prophets, and sweep away the mass of 
ecclesiastical and theological rubbish beneath 
which that faith was buried. 

At first the message of Jesus was accepted 
with enthusiasm. His grace of diction, his 
pictorial imagination, his sympathetic under- 
standing of the common people, his spiritual 
enthusiasm, the contrast of his vivid teaching 
of practical truth with the dry-as-dust theolo- 
gies of the scribes, his practice in acts of 
mercy and charity of the truths he taught, 
drew the people to him. Great crowds 
thronged to hear him wherever he went. His 
journeys through Galilee were like triumphal 
processions. 

But this was because the people did not, 



[36] THE LAST DAYS OF JESU9 CHRIST 

would not, perhaps could not, comprehend 
his message. In vain he told them with many 
a parable that the kingdom of God would riot 
immediately appear; that it would grow up 
gradually, secretly, in spite of hostility; that 
it would not be given to a waiting Israel by 
God, but won by an eager Israel at a great 
cost. Prejudices, the growth of generations, 
cannot be dissipated by a single teacher in a 
single lifetime, however powerful his teach- 
ing. The popular misapprehension in that 
age is not strange, since even now scholars in- 
sist in attributing to Jesus the very errors 
which he so vigorously combated. When he 
refused the proffered crown and told the 
thronging hearers plainly that they could 
win only by self-sacrifice the kingdom which 
they had hoped to receive as an inheritance 
without effort, they abandoned him. So uni- 
versal even in Galilee was the disaffection 
that he turned sadly to his own chosen friends 
with the pathetic inquiry, "Will ye also go 
away?" 

And now that the end was drawing near 
it needed no supernatural vision to foresee 
what that end must be. The brief enthusiasm 
with which Jesus had been welcomed on enter- 
ing Jerusalem did not deceive him. Probably 
that enthusiasm was effectually dissipated by 
his Temple teaching that the kingdom would 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [37] 

be taken from Israel and given to the Gentile 
world. At least no indication of its continu- 
ing existence is furnished by the Gospel ac- 
counts of Christ's last week in Jerusalem. 
The plans for his arrest, trial, and conviction 
had been made. The traitor who was to be- 
tray his place of retirement had been pur- 
chased. Jesus had but one alternative: either 
to flee into the wilderness, abandon his mis- 
sion and wait for some other one to succeed 
where he had failed, or to go forward in a 
hope against hope that by his martyrdom he 
might accomplish what by his life and teach- 
ing he had not been able to accomplish, the 
beginning of the conversion of the world from 
pagan to divine ideals of life. 

One of the prophets had forecast his pur- 
pose by putting in his mouth the saying, "Lo, 
I come to do thy will, O God." That proph- 
ecy Jesus had fulfilled. His will had been 
one with his Father's will. His life desire 
was to know that will and do it. "I seek," 
he told his disciples, "not mine own will, but 
the will of him that sent me." He believed 
that God had a plan that gave meaning and 
purpose to all history, and to carry out that 
plan was his one all-controlling desire. "He 
believed that he and his followers were called 
on to build roadways over which the hosts of 
God would march in victory. He believed 



[38] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

that he was the representative of the eternal 
purpose of God, the only thing in life worth 
living and dying for, and his enthusiastic 
loyalty is his dominant quality from the time 
he came into Galilee crying, 'The kingdom of 
God is at hand,' until he died for his Cause 
on Calvary." * 

And now the question pressed upon him, 
as it presses at times on all God's children, 
Had he misunderstood his Father's will? 
Was the supreme desire of his life to be dis- 
appointed? Was the Father to be disap- 
pointed in his child? It was not the fear of 
the morrow's anguish, the shame and spitting, 
the cruel flagellations and the crown of 
thorns, the shouting of the mob eager for his 
death and the death upon the cross to follow, 
that made the anguish of Gethsemane. Many 
a soldier on French soil during the last two 
years has faced without hesitation physical 
pains far more prolonged than Jesus had to 
bear. The insupportable anguish of that hour 
was the question, Had he misunderstood his 
Father's will? And if he had correctly un- 
derstood it, would he have the strength to 
fulfill it? 

The Hebrew psalmist centuries before had 
prayed, "Show me thy paths, O Lord." This 

1 "The Manhood of the Master," by Harry Emer- 
son Fosdick, p. 56. 



THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST [39] 

had been the burden of Jesus' prayer. His 
will had been so to present the kingdom of 
God that the people would accept it, a hope 
which he had expressed in a characteristically 
homely figure: "How often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings!" 
But they would not. And now? Now he 
faced not merely dishonor and death to him- 
self; he faced the despair of his disciples, 
the wreckage of their hopes, the heartbroken 
mother, the taunts and triumphs of his foes, 
Israel's foes, God's foes. 

Could this be what his Father willed? 
Could triumph for God's kingdom come out 
of the defeat of his Christ? And if the en- 
durance of that defeat for himself and his 
friends and his disciples and his mother — if 
that was his Father's will, would he have the 
strength to fulfill that will? "Not what I 
will, but what thou wilt," was not a prayer 
of submissive resignation. It was a prayer 
of eager consecration, not a prayer that his 
Father would fulfill His Son's will, but that 
the Son might be clear of vision to see and 
strong of purpose to fulfill his Father's will. 

It sometimes helps us to understand the 
experience of Jesus if we read it in the light 
of a like experience of one of his followers — 



[40] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

perhaps an unacknowledged and unconscious 
follower. 

In 1864 Mrs. Gurney, an English Friend, 
wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln which, as 
far as I know, has not been preserved; it 
elicited from him a letter from which I make 
the following extract: 

We hoped for a happy termination of this ter- 
rible war long before this; but God knows best, 
and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowl- 
edge his wisdom and our own error therein. Mean- 
while we must work earnestly in the best lights he 
gives us, trusting that so working still conduces 
to the great ends he ordains. Surely he intends 
some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, 
which no mortal could make and no mortal could 
stay. 

Six months later, in his inaugural address, 
he repeated the same truth in words which 
history will never forget: 

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all 
the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash 
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as 
was said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether." 

What perplexities clouded Abraham Lin- 
coln's mind, what insistent doubts whether he 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [41] 

was doing the will of God assailed him with 
the argument that many good men and true 
believed the war for which he was so largely 
responsible was not God's will? We do not 
know. He wrote no journal,, left no autobiog- 
raphy^ and rarely, if ever, disclosed to others 
the secret struggles of his own heart. Dr. 
Harry Emerson Fosdick characterizes prayer 
as "dominant desire." All dominant desire 
may not be prayer, but nothing is prayer 
which is not dominant desire. And we may 
be sure that this dominant desire for the 
preservation of his country and the emanci- 
pation of the slave could not have sustained 
Abraham Lincoln through those four years of 
burden-bearing if the dominant desire had 
not also been a prayer — a prayer that he 
might understand the will of God and that 
he might have strength and courage to fulfill 
it.. 

Every earnest soul who has reached the 
age of Jesus has had occasion to pass through 
his own Gethsemane. Not with many is it 
any such Gethsemane as Abraham Lincoln's; 
perhaps not with any such a Gethsemane as 
that of Jesus. Yet who, when in his pilgrim- 
age he has come to the Valley of the Shadow 
of Death, has not questioned with himself 
whether he has not missed his way, whether 
he has not misunderstood the will of God, 



[42] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

whether, if he has understood it aright, he 
has the courage to go through the Valley to 
the unseen, unknown, and, to him, uncertain 
life which lies beyond? 

In such an hour what we need is not resig- 
nation, not submission to the will of one too 
strong to be resisted, but consecration, the 
absolute, unreserved dedication of one's self 
to the service of one whose love is richer, 
wiser, and stronger than one's own; not the 
prayer, Save me from the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death; but the prayer, Grant me 
the rod and the staff which will enable me to 
go through the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death and fear no evil; never the prayer, "If 
it be possible, let this cup pass from me," ex- 
cept as it is accompanied by the prayer, "Not 
what I will, but what thou wilt." 

Christ's prayer was not unanswered. Nor 
was it denied. An angel, it is said, appeared 
to him from heaven strengthening him. Did 
this angel come as art has customarily repre- 
sented him, robed and winged? Or did he 
come unseen, unheard, bringing his message 
to the heart of the petitioner? We do not 
know. We only know how he comes to us; 
and we may reasonably and reverently sur- 
mise that as he comes to us he came to Jesus. 
What the answer was that he brought the 
events which follow make clear. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [43] 

An ancient artist, Gaudenzio Ferrari, truly 
expresses that answer in a painting in 
which the angel presents to the kneeling 
Christ a cup with a miniature cross surmount- 
ing it. By the angel's message Christ's ques- 
tion was answered, his doubts were dissolved, 
his perplexities were ended. His Father's 
will was made clear to him, and with the 
clearness of vision came the strength to ful- 
fill that will. In all the tragedy of the hours 
which followed, in the court of Caiaphas, in 
the judgment hall of Pilate, in the march to 
death, in the slow agony of the crucifixion, 
before the howling mob, the taunting priests, 
the brokenhearted disciples, Jesus was the 
one calm, unexcited, unperturbed figure, 
dwelling in divine peace in the midst of the 
human tempest, sustained by the assurance 
that he had seen clearly and would be able to 
accomplish completely the work which the 
Father had given him to do. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [45] 



draper 

Father — Thou dost so often seem to hide 
Thyself: we cannot see Thee; Thou art so of- 
ten silent: we cannot hear Thy voice; we so 
often miss our way: we long to follow Thy 
Son but cannot tell which path he would take 
were he in our perplexity. Then, Father, we 
know that he also has experienced our per- 
plexity and we take courage. The two deep- 
est desires of our hearts we bring to Thee. 
Take away the dimness of our vision: enable 
us to see clearly what is Thy will. Take 
away our coward fears : give us courage to do 
that will. Help us never to pray, never to 
desire, our will not Thine be done: always to 
desire, always to pray, Thy will not ours be 
done. Help us ever to make it our will to 
do Thy will. This we ask for the sake of 
our Leader and his cause to whom we have 
dedicated and do now rededicate our wills, 
our powers, our lives. Amen. 



RELIGION 

CHRIST WITH THE 
CHURCH IN THE COURT ROOM 



[48] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



What laws, my blessed Saviour, hast Thou 

broken 
That so severe a sentence should be spoken? 
How hast Thou 'gainst Thy Father's will 

contended, 

In what offended? 

With scourges, blows, and spitting they re- 
viled Thee; 

They crowned Thy brow with thorns, while 
King they styled Thee; 

When faint with pains Thy tortured body 
suffered, 

Then gall they offered. 

Say wherefore thus by woes wast Thou sur- 
rounded ? 
Ah! Lord, for my transgressions Thou wast 

wounded : 
God took the guilt from me, who should have 
paid it; 

On Thee He laid it. 

Johann Hermann. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [^9], 



The trial of Jesus before the Jewish San- 
hedrin is the most important ecclesiastical 
trial in the history of the race. It is not the 
only one in which time has reversed the posi- 
tion of the parties. Then Jesus Christ was 
on trial before the Church. Now the Church 
is on trial before Jesus Christ. 

Jesus had from his first entrance into pub- 
lic life given himself wholly to the service of 
his fellow-men. For himself he neither re- 
fused nor asked anything. Proffered hospi- 
tality he always accepted. When none was 
proffered^ he slept with his cloak about him 
for a covering and the sky above him for a 
roof. Honors he never sought, and he re- 
ceived with equanimity alike the applause and 
the execrations of the crowd. His pleasures 
were of the simplest — boating on the lake, 
walking with his friends in the fields. He 
accepted gladly the loyalty of spontaneous 
disciples, but sought not to make proselytes — 
neither for himself nor for his doctrines. 
When the people crowded about him, at- 
tracted by his winning personality, he warned 
them not to follow him unless they were will- 
ing to suffer for their loyalty at the hazard of 
losing property, friends, reputation, life it- 



[50] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

self. When he told the rich young ruler to 
sell all that he had and give to the poor if he 
wished to become one of the disciples in im- 
mediate attendance on the Master, he pro- 
posed the standard which he had made his 
own. He adopted his service to the needs 
of the people. Were men hungry, he fed 
them; sick, he healed them; ignorant, he 
taught them; discouraged, he heartened 
them; self-satisfied, he rebuked them; de- 
spairing, he forgave them. He was equally 
ready to minister to the rich and to the poor, 
to the scholar and to the peasant, to the Jew 
and to the Gentile, to men and to women, to 
grown-ups and to little children, to the vir- 
tuous and to the vicious. To him no one was 
outcast. He touched the loathsome leper when 
he healed him; opened his heart to the wan- 
dering lunatic driven out as accursed by God 
from the habitations of men ; and stooped and 
wrote, we know not what, upon the ground, 
that he might not look upon the adulterous 
woman shrinking in fear and shame before 
him. 

And now he was put on trial for his life by 
the Church of his fathers. Why? What had 
he done? And who were his accusers? 

Historically the Pharisees were the reform- 
ers of the second century before Christ. Like 
the Roman Catholics of a later age, they sup- 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [51] 

plemented the Old Testament with traditions ; 
these, they asserted, had come down from the 
days of Moses. These traditions, which they 
asserted had been handed down orally from 
generation to generation, came to be regarded 
as of equal binding force with the Scriptures. 
Obedience, not merely to the moral laws con- 
tained in the Old Testament, but to a great 
number of minute ecclesiastical regulations, 
became to the Pharisees the essence of reli- 
gion. 

There were some pure precepts in their 
teaching; the characteristic feature of their 
religion was a pious formalism thinly cover- 
ing an intensely selfish spirit. Religion 
tended to become a trade. "Three things," 
so ran their proverb, "will make thee prosper 
— prayer, alms, and penitence." The spirit 
even of their ethics was based on the maxim, 
"Consider for whom thou dost work and what 
is thy master who will pay thee thy wages." 
They fasted and prayed with great regular- 
ity and paid tithes of all they possessed, but 
all was done for hope of reward. 

The simple narratives of the Gospel writers 
do not give us the details of the accusation 
which the Pharisees brought against their 
prisoner, but from later Jewish writings 1 and 

1 See Isaac Goldstein's " Jesus of Nazareth" and 
"Trial of Jesus" by M. Salvador and M. Dupin. 



[52] THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST 

from incidental references in the Gospel we 
can easily reconstruct the charges preferred 
against him. 

It was charged that he was a preacher of 
turbulence and faction; that he flattered the 
poor and inveighed against the rich; that he 
denounced whole cities, as Capernaum, Beth- 
saida, Chorazin; that he gathered about him 
a rabble of publicans, harlots, and drunkards, 
under a pretense of reforming them; that 
he subverted the laws and institutions of the 
Mosaic commonwealth, and substituted an un- 
authorized legislation of his own ; that he dis- 
regarded not only all distinctions of society, 
but even those of religion, and commended 
the idolatrous Samaritan as of greater worth 
than the holy priest and pious Levite; that 
he had condemned the solemn sanctions of 
their holy religion, had sat down to eat with 
publicans and sinners with unwashed hands, 
had disregarded the Jewish fasts and the ob- 
ligations of the Jewish Sabbath, had attended 
the Jewish feasts with great irregularity or 
not at all, had declared that God could be 
worshiped in any other place as well as in 
his holy temple, had openly and violently in- 
terfered with its sacred services by driving 
away the cattle gathered there for sacrifice, 
and, above all, that he had been guilty of the 
most heinous crime known to Jewish law — 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [53] 

blasphemy — by asserting of himself that he 
was the contemporary of Abraham, the Lord 
of David, the superior of Solomon, the Son, 
even, of God. That he had been guilty of 
any inhumanity to man, that he had violated 
any moral precepts of the Mosaic code or 
taught anything inconsistent with the spiritual 
teachings of the great prophets, was not then 
and never has been since charged against him. 

Thus in this trial were put in sharp con- 
trast two conceptions of religion, the humani- 
tarian and the ceremonial — two conceptions 
which have been in the world ever since Cain 
made an offering to Jehovah and almost 
simultaneously slew his brother. 

The one conception imagines that God is 
best pleased by a scrupulous obedience to cer- 
tain carefully defined regulations and a punc- 
tilious observance of certain prescribed rit- 
uals. This it is that will save the world from 
the wrath of God or the gods. The other be- 
lieves that God is best pleased by a spontane- 
ous life of love, service, and sacrifice. This it 
is which will save the world from the terrible 
evils it brings upon itself by its selfishness, 
its self-seeking, its self-indulgence. 

The first conception was held in Old Testa- 
ment times by priests who put emphasis on 
the importance of the Levitical code and the 
sacredness of the Temple sacrifices. In New 



[54] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

Testament times by those who insisted on 
fastings and ablutions, on synagogue services 
and priestly sacrifices; who would plan the 
murder of their opponent, but would not en- 
ter a pagan court on a holy day. In the 
Middle Ages by priests who devoted their 
lives to masses and confessions, and by inquis- 
itors who executed as criminals those who 
doubted the doctrines or neglected the serv- 
ices of the Church. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury by a Church which preached a "code of 
ethical laws" to select congregations and 
left the common people unshepherded and 
uncared for. In New England by Puritans 
who made much of understanding foreordina- 
tion and decrees, much of a scrupulous ob- 
servance of Sabbath regulations, and made 
money out of selling rum to the heathen and 
importing slaves from heathendom. 

The second conception of religion was held 
in Old Testament times by prophets who 
taught that what God required was doing 
justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly 
with God. In New Testament times by the 
Apostle who declared that greatest of all vir- 
tues is the love that suffer eth long and still 
is kind. In the Middle Ages by preaching 
friars who ministered of the truth to the poor 
of England and by nuns whose lives were un- 
selfishly devoted to ministering to the bodies 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [55] 

of the poor. In the eighteenth century by 
Wesley, who abandoned the ecclesiasticism of 
his early years for a lifelong itinerant min- 
istry to the neglected and the outcast. In 
New England by John Eliot and Jonathan 
Edwards preaching to the Indians. 

Jesus did not merely go about doing good. 
He did not "turn aside to make the weary 
glad." 2 To make the weary glad was his life 
mission. This was his method of achieving 
the world's salvation. In his first recorded 
sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth he de- 
clared this to be the object for which he was 
sent: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be- 
cause he hath anointed me to preach the Gos- 
pel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the 
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the 
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, 
to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
When John in prison, puzzled by the fact 
that Jesus had seemingly done nothing ef- 
fective for the emancipation of the Jews, sent 
his disciples to ask, "Art thou he that should 

2 When the Lord of Love was here, 
Happy hearts to him were dear, 

Though his heart was sad; 
Worn and lowly for our sake, 
Yet he turned aside to make 
All the weary glad. 

Stopford A. Brooke. 



[56] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

come, or do we look for another?" Jesus 
sent back the account of his ministry of love 
as the sole evidence of his Messiahship. 
"Go/' he said, "and show John again those 
things which ye do hear and see; the blind re- 
ceive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers 
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised up and the poor have the Gospel 
preached to them." And when at the close of 
his Temple teaching he pictured to his dis- 
ciples the last judgment, the standard he 
set up was not scrupulous obedience to regu- 
lations, nor punctilious observance of ritual, 
nor accurate understanding of theological 
truth, but practical charity. It was those who 
had given food to the hungry, drink to the 
thirsty, hospitality to the stranger, clothing 
to the naked, personal fellowship to the sick 
and the imprisoned, that were welcomed to 
the palace of the King. 

Love is the only wedding garment needed 
to furnish the guest for the wedding feast. 
The kingdom of God is the kingdom of Love. 
And when the spirit of love animates the 
children of men, then, and not before, will 
come on the earth that kingdom for which the 
Master bids his followers work and pray. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [57] 



draper 

From shams, false pretense, and formalism, 
Spirit of God, deliver us. From doing deeds 
of charity as servants in hope of reward, 
Spirit of God, deliver us. From shallow con- 
formity to custom, from seeking the applause 
of our fellow men, from pride of good works, 
self-conceit, and self -righteousness, Spirit of 
God, deliver us. From mere unthinking imi- 
tation of others, even of our Master, in care- 
less forgetfulness of the inner purpose of his 
life, Spirit of God, deliver us. Endue us 
with our Master's spirit that all our acts, 
whether of service or of worship, may be the 
spontaneous expression of that life of faith, 
and hope, and love which Thou dost freely 
give to us that we may be in very truth Thy 
children. Amen. 



FAITH 

CHRIST WITH THE 
SKEPTIC IN THE PR^TORIUM 



[60] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



God is never so far off 

As even to be near. 
He is within, our spirit is 

The home He holds most dear. 

To think of Him as by our side, 

Is almost as untrue 
As to remove His throne beyond 

Those skies of starry blue. 

So all the while I thought myself 
Homeless, forlorn and weary, 

Missing my joy, I walked the earth 
Myself God's sanctuary. 

Frederick William Faber. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [6l] 



"What is truth ?" said jesting Pilate, and 
would not wait for an answer. 

Nothing strange in that. What was truth 
in that hour? What protection did it afford 
against a mob maddened by an egotistical na- 
tionalism which it mistook for patriotism and 
a malignant bigotry which it mistook for re- 
ligion; what protection against the scheming 
ecclesiastical politicians who had cunningly 
planned for this hour and aroused the pas- 
sionate prejudices of the mob to serve their 
purpose; what protection against the disap- 
pointed ambition of a treacherous disciple? 
The clamorous welcome of the Galileans on 
the first day of the week, "Crown him ! Crown 
him!" was drowned by the clamorous exe- 
cration of the mob on Friday, "Crucify him ! 
Crucify him !" Who could then foresee that 
to-day no enemy would be left to defend the 
crucifixion, while a throng which no man can 
number, Jew and Gentile, Christian and pa- 
gan, would join with the skeptic John Stuart 
Mill in declaring that there is no "better 
translation of the rule of virtue from the ab- 
stract into the concrete than to endeavor so 
to live that Christ would approve our life/' 
and with the rationalist Dr. Hooykaas in the 



[62] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

reverential acclaim: "Thy triumph is secure. 
Thy name shall be borne on the breath of the 
winds through all the world; and with that 
name no thought except of goodness, noble- 
ness, and love shall link itself in the bosoms 
of thy brothers who have learned to know 
thee and what thou art. Thy name shall be 
the symbol of salvation to the weak and wan- 
dering, of restoration to the fallen and the 
guilty, of hope to all who sink in comfortless 
despair. Thy name shall be the mighty cry 
of progress in freedom, in truth, in purity — 
the living symbol of the dignity of man, the 
epitome of all that is noble, lofty, and holy 
upon earth." 

This self-conscious age, sitting in judg- 
ment on itself, declares itself to be a skeptical 
age. Schumann musically interprets its 
spirit by his questioning "Warum?" (Why?) ; 
Goldwin Smith, by his essay "Guesses at 
Truth", J. Cotter Morison, by his proposal 
to substitute "The Service of Man" for the 
abandoned service of God. This skepticism 
is not a mere doubt of ancient creeds, not 
merely a doubt or a discarding of the Church 
or the Bible as an authority, not merely 
Tennyson's "honest doubt." 1 It is a doubt 

1 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

—In Memoriam. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [63] 

sometimes of the value of truths sometimes 
of the possibility of attaining it. 

It is expressed by the agnostic, who tells 
us that "the Great Companion is dead"; that 
at death our friend has slid down into "the 
somber, unechoing gulf of nothingness"; that 
there is so little basis for moral judgments 
that it is difficult to find a man so virtuous as 
to deserve a good supper or so wicked as to 
deserve a good drubbing. 2 

It is expressed by the safe man who, for 
an eager search for the truth, substitutes an 
eager search for peace ; "who never enunciates 
a truth without guarding himself against be- 
ing supposed to exclude the contradictory; 
who holds that Scripture is the only author- 
ity, yet that the Church is to be deferred to; 
that faith only justifies, yet that it does not 
justify without works; that grace does not 
depend on the sacraments, yet is not given 
without them; that bishops are a divine ordi- 
nance, yet those who have them not are in the 
same religious condition as those who have." 3 

It is expressed by the Athenians, who 
"spend their time in nothing else but either 
to tell or hear some new thing"; who throng 
a forum and occasionally a church, not in 
search of truth, but in search of the latest 

2 W. K. Clifford; John Morley; David Hume. 
'Cardinal Newman. 



[64] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

fashion in philosophy; who change their 
opinion as frequently and as readily as a 
fashionable woman changes her bonnet; who 
deny every affirmative and affirm every nega- 
tive; who "make use of their reason to inquire 
and debate, but not to fix and determine." 4 

It is expressed by the cynics who imagine 
that to believe anything is a sign of a de- 
cadent intellect, and pride themselves in be- 
ing in advance of their age because they imi- 
tate the toleration of the ancient Romans, who 
regarded all religious creeds and forms as 
equally false, but also equally useful as a po- 
litical convenience. 

How shall the Church of Christ meet this 
spirit of skepticism? How did its Master 
and leader meet this spirit of skepticism in 
his own age? What answer did he give by 
his life to the half-contemptuous question, 
"What is truth?" 

Truth was not to him an opinion, tenta- 
tively held, for further investigation and sub- 
ject to future reversal. It might almost be 
said of Jesus that he had no opinions — as 
thus defined. 

Nor was truth to him an intellectual con- 
viction borrowed from others. He did not de- 
rive his faith from the beliefs of his fore- 
fathers or the affirmations of the Scriptures. 

4 Montaigne. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [65] 

Nor was it a discovery ascertained by in- 
vestigation and confirmed and buttressed by 
arguments. There is no indication in his 
teaching of a search after truth; no outcry 
like that of the Psalmist, "As the hart pant- 
eth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul 
after thee, O God;" no sign of personal per- 
plexity like that of Paul's "perplexed, but 
not in despair." Compare his "Father, I 
knew that thou hear est me always," with 
Job's "O that I knew where I might find 
him !" Read his assurance to his disciples in 
his last message to them, "And I will pray 
the Father, and he shall give you another 
Comforter, that he may abide with you for- 
ever;" then compare with it the last message 
of Socrates to his friends before his death, 
"And where shall we find a good charmer of 
our fears, Socrates, when you are gone?" 
"Hellas," he replied, "is a large place, Cebes, 
and has many good men, and there are bar- 
barous races not a few; seek for him among 
them all, far and wide, sparing neither pains 
nor money, for there is no better way of 
using your money." 

We all know some truths which are ex- 
periences. Long before the child learns in 
school about the attraction of gravitation he 
discovers, in his first lessons in walking, that 
if he is not careful he will fall. He does not 



[66] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

formulate the law, nor define it, nor know 
the methods or limits of its operation. But 
he has an experience of it, and that experi- 
ence no argument gave and no argument can 
take away. So, if he has a happy home, 
long before he studies moral philosophy he 
has an experience of parental love and care 
and a responding experience of filial obliga- 
tions, honor and affection. 

In his teaching Jesus assumed that there 
is in all men an undeveloped capacity to ex- 
perience the truth. He acted on the assump- 
tion that truth fits the human soul as a well- 
made glove fits the hand; that truth and the 
soul are made for each other. He identified 
truth and life, and for the most part taught 
only those truths that are a part of life. He 
dealt not in surmises, opinions, hypotheses; 
he dealt only in convictions, and only in those 
convictions that have their roots in ennobled 
human nature. In what we call the subcon- 
scious self he saw the seeds of truth and life, 
and his appeal was aimed to draw them out, 
as the sun draws out the slumbering seed in 
spring. He often addressed questions to 
those who questioned him and incited them 
to find in themselves the answer to their own 
questions. Thus he asked the rich young 
ruler, "Why callest thou me good? there is 
none good but one, that is God;" and to the 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [67] 

scribe asking which is the chief command- 
ment^ he replied, "How readest thou?" and 
called on the group hearing his parable of 
the Good Samaritan to tell him, "Which now 
of these three thinkest thou was neighbor to 
him that fell among thieves?" 

In studying Paul's epistles the reader can 
often see that the Apostle, to convince others, 
uses the arguments by which he has first 
convinced himself. Jesus rarely argues. He 
affirms. His most solemn and weighty affir- 
mations are often preceded by the words, 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you." So far from 
defending a tradition he often sets his simple 
affirmation against it: "Ye have heard that 
it hath been said, but I say unto you." When 
he cites Scripture, it is generally as an illus- 
tration, not as an argument. He puts his per- 
sonal experience above Scripture: "Ye search 
the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have 
eternal life: and they are they which testify 
of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye 
might have life." 

All spiritual truths were thus elemental in 
Jesus. God, immortality, the life eternal, the 
laws of righteousness, were no convictions im- 
ported from the past, no opinions derived 
from and supported by philosophical argu- 
ments. They were a part of his self-con- 
scious self. He says of himself, "I am the 



[68] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

truth !" Paul says of him, "He cannot deny 
himself/' And to the divinely conscious sense 
of truth — perhaps I should rather say to the 
unawakened capacity to become conscious of 
it, which all normal men possess — he habit- 
ually appealed in his public ministry. The 
awakening life responded to his words; and 
the people were astonished at his teaching be- 
cause he taught them as one having authority 
and not as the scribes. The authority was the 
divinely awakened response in their own souls. 

The Church must find in the spirit and 
method of its Master the answer to be given 
to this age asking, sometimes seriously, some- 
times carelessly, sometimes cynically, Pilate's 
question, "What is truth?" 

It cannot find in the recorded experiences 
of the past an answer which will either satisfy 
the serious or confound the cynic. The age 
will not be content, it ought not to be content, 
with convictions imported whether from the 
Reformed creeds of the seventeenth century, 
or from the Catholic creeds of the first four 
centuries, or from the pre-Christian creeds 
of the Hebrew prophets. 

Certainly it will not be content with hy- 
potheses derived by the much-vaunted "scien- 
tific method" and buttressed and defended by 
biological evolution and literary criticism. 
The beliefs of the past may help to confirm 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [69] 

the believer in his present faith. The modern 
scientific and literary method may help to 
clear away some intellectual difficulties which 
perplex him. But it is the life which is the 
light of the world. And the doubts of the 
world will never be solved by either the old 
theology or the new theology. They will be 
solved only by a new lif e, a life in the Church 
which is a present experience of a living God, 
bringing with him to the soul which accepts 
him a present experience of forgiveness that 
relieves from the burden of past errors and 
sins, and a present inspiration that gives 
power for future achievement. 

That it is not theological opinions which 
have made effective preachers of truth is evi- 
dent from the fact that Savonarola and 
Luther, Massillon and Wesley, Phillips 
Brooks, and D wight L. Moody, have been ef- 
fective preachers of the truth. It is only the 
truth which transcends all definitions, the 
truth that is more than an ancient tradition 
or a modern hypothesis, the truth that is a 
living experience, which can endow the 
Church with power to silence the sneers of 
the cynic or to satisfy and relieve the per- 
plexities of the honest doubter. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [71] 



draper 

Father — keep us from idle curiosity; from 
idle credulity; from prejudice of mind and 
blindness of heart. Inspire in us the readi- 
ness to accept truth whoever may bring it. 
Make us eager to know the truth; but suffer 
us never to be content with knowledge. Make 
us eager to act truly and to be true. May Thy 
truth make us free : free from false teaching, 
false fears, false hopes, false ideals. Suffer 
us never to accept falsehood because false- 
hood is comfortable ; never to be false to our- 
selves and to Thee because falseness is easy. 
As we grow older may we grow wiser — grow 
in our understanding of life and in our ac- 
quaintance with Thee. May our wisdom be 
first pure, then peaceful, always the enlight- 
ener of our conscience, the servant of our 
love, the minister to our life. So may we 
grow into the likeness of him who is the way, 
the truth, the life — Thy Son, our Saviour. 
Amen, 



SACRIFICE 

CHRIST ALONE 
UPON THE CROSS 



[74] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 



Jesu, whelmed in fears unknown, 
With our evil left alone, 
While no light from Heaven is shown: 
Hear us, Holy Jesu. 

When we vainly seem to pray, 
And our hope seems far away, 
In the darkness be our stay: 
Hear us, Holy Jesu. 

Though no Father seem to hear, 
Though no light our spirits cheer, 
Tell our faith that God is near: 
Hear us, Holy Jesu. 

Thomas B. Pollock. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [75] 



''There are/' says F. W. Robertson, "two 
kinds of solitude: the first consisting of insu- 
lation in space, the other of isolation of the 
spirit. The first is simply separation by dis- 
tance. . . . The other is loneliness of soul." 
Jesus on the cross was one of a great multi- 
tude. But what companionship of soul was 
possible for him with the victorious priests 
saying to each other, with malignant, smiling 
triumph, "He saved others ; himself he cannot 
save/' or with the indifferent soldiers gam- 
bling for the possession of the robe which love 
had wrought for him; or with the careless 
spectators drawn to the place by the news 
of a triple execution ; or with the cursing brig- 
and on one side of him; or with the repentant 
brigand looking back on a life dedicated to 
lust and plunder. 

There were his mother and his much-loved 
disciple at the foot of the cross and two faith- 
ful women. But they did not and could not 
comprehend the true significance of that 
hour. They saw with pitying anguish their 
Master dying, and with him dying their hope 
that he was to be the world's Messiah. They 
needed the comforting strength which by his 



[76] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

dying words Jesus gave to them ; comfort and 
strength they could not give to him. 

And now a greater loneliness fell upon him 
— greater than that in the childhood vision of 
his Father's commission in the Temple, which 
even his mother could not comprehend; 
greater than that of the long and perplexed 
pondering in the wilderness upon the problem 
of his life-work; greater than those hours 
which he spent at night when he went apart 
by himself to recruit his courage and his 
strength by prayer; greater than his solitude 
in the Garden, in the court-room, or at Pilate's 
judgment seat. He had only partially fore- 
told this hour — had he more than partially 
foreseen it? — when he told his disciples: 
"The hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye 
shall be scattered, every man to his own, and 
shall leave me alone : and yet I am not alone, 
because the Father is with me." 

For now the Father was not with him. 
He was left, or at least seemed to himself to 
be left, to face this trial hour without even 
his Father's companionship. It was the only 
experience in his life that wrung from him a 
cry of self-pity. The nation had rejected 
him, his mother and his brothers had thought 
that he was beside himself, the fickle multi- 
tude had deserted him, the Church had con- 
spired to slay him, his disciples had scattered 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [77] 

every man to his own, the one disciple who 
understood him best did not understand him 
now. But never till the consciousness of his 
Father's presence was denied him did he ut- 
ter a word of remonstrance or an appeal for 
help. 

We may well believe that this experience 
came to Jesus because it was his mission as 
our guide and companion to pass through 
every experience of trial common to man. And 
this experience of "forsaken" is not uncom- 
mon. Jeremiah describes this experience as 
"the wilderness, ... a land of deserts and 
of pits, ... a land of drought and of the 
shadow of death, ... a land that no man 
passed through, and where no man dwelt/' 
Bunyan allegorizes this experience in his pic- 
ture of Christian going alone through the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death where "one of 
the wicked ones got behind him and stepped 
up softly to him, and whisperingly suggested 
many grievous blasphemies to him, which he 
verily thought had proceeded from his own 
mind." Tennyson portrays this experience in 
Sir Percival's quest for the Holy Grail: 

But even while I drank the brook, and ate 
The goodly apples, all these things at once 
Fell into dust, and I was left alone, 
And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns. 



[78] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

R. E. Prothero, in his interesting volume on 
"The Psalms in Human Life/' gives histori- 
cal illustrations of this experience: the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury found the Crusaders so 
given over to licentiousness that his chaplain 
declared, "God is not in the camp"; and 
Richard I, deserted by his followers and see- 
ing that the crusade had failed, thought him- 
self deserted by God also, and cried out in 
Christ's own words, "My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" 

This experience of "forsaken" is sometimes 
a national experience. Modern scholars think 
that many of the psalms which were formerly 
regarded as individual experiences were really 
composed and sung as experiences of the na- 
tion. If so, then such psalms as the Forty- 
second and the Forty-third may perhaps be 
regarded as the expression of the struggle of 
faith in a time when the people of Israel 
seemed to be forsaken by their God. As 
"My Country, 'Tis of Thee," when sung by 
a congregation, expresses a feeling of na- 
tional patriotism, so these psalms and others 
like them would express an experience of na- 
tional loneliness: 



My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: 
when shall I come and appear before God? My 
tears have been my meat day and night, while they 
continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [79] 

Just now there are not a few who, with 
Job, cannot perceive God in current events, 
and so conclude either that there is no God 
or that God dwells in beatific indifference to 
human sin and suffering, or that he is at best 
a feeble God who is doing the little that he 
can, but cannot do much. Christ's teaching 
seems to me to give a different solution to our 
perplexity. In a story, in substance more 
than once repeated, he compares the kingdom 
of God to an estate left by the lord of the 
estate in charge of his servants while he goes 
on a journey into a far country, a journey 
which lasts for a long time. He implies that 
God does leave us at times to ourselves that 
we may learn in the school of experience what 
we can learn in no other way. For it is in 
that school that we best learn the lessons that 
really determine our character and control 
our conduct. 

I have a friend who seems to me to possess 
what I will call the teaching genius. She has 
charge of a room of young girl pupils. She 
left them alone one day, telling them before 
she went that she trusted to their honor 
to preserve order in her absence. When she 
returned, she found the room a scene of wild, 
hilarious disorder. She might have resolved 
that never again would she absent herself 
from the room. Or, if she was compelled to 



[80] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

do so, that she would always leave a monitor 
to keep order. But she believed that it was 
more important to teach her pupils self-con- 
trol than to teach them geography or arithme- 
tic or English. The course she pursued I 
need not here describe; indeed, I could not 
describe it, for the essence of that method 
was the substitution of personal influence for 
mere governmental authority, and the meth- 
ods of personal influence defy description. 
Suffice it to say that less than six months later 
she was detained in the principal's room after 
the close of recess, was asked by the princi- 
pal to take two visitors up to her room and 
let them see her class work, and entered to 
find that the girls were reading the Shakes- 
peare appointed for that hour with the self- 
elected president of the class acting as their 
leader. The teacher had accomplished her 
purpose. Leaving them alone, she had trained 
them in self-control as she could not have 
done had she always remained with them. 

Thus God is teaching his children the 
meaning of human brotherhood. 

The ideal of a human brotherhood trans- 
cending all limits of race, religion, or nation- 
ality has been for centuries before the sons of 
men. Probably there has been no century 
since Jesus preached human brotherhood in 
Palestine when there has not been some 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [81] 

prophet or poet to give to his generation a vi- 
sion of that splendid ideal. At the close of the 
eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century a few radicals attempted to 
realize that ideal in a government "conceived 
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition 
that all men are created equal/' In the terri- 
ble school of experience our own country, 
North and South, learned the incongruity of 
African slavery with that ideal, and it was 
abolished. Since that time the world has 
had in the unapproachable prosperity of this 
country a demonstration that it is possible for 
men of different religious faiths, different so- 
cial conditions, different nationalities, differ- 
ent races, to live together, united by a com- 
mon human aspiration and a mutual respect. 
We have not practiced our avowed principles 
consistently ; we have not lived up to our pro- 
fessed ideal. But even so, in the imperfect 
realization of our ideal, in the imperfect prac- 
tice of our avowed principles, we have been 
rewarded far beyond our deserts. 

Meanwhile the common people of Europe 
— of England, France, Italy, and in less de- 
gree of Russia and Germany — have perceived 
this ideal of human brotherhood and have in 
some measure accepted it as their own. But 
they have been confronted by a very different 
ideal, not confined to Germany, but in Ger- 



[82] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

many more than in any other civilized nation 
taught by the religious and political leaders 
and more fully than in any other nation em- 
bodied in the government. That ideal, as ex- 
pressed by their press, their professors, their 
preachers, their political leaders, has been 
that might makes right; that one race must 
dominate Europe ; that the Slav and the Latin 
races must be sub j ect to the Teuton race ; that 
war is a biological, a moral, and a Christian 
necessity ; that there is no brotherhood of na- 
tions; that the uncivilized peoples are the 
"spoils" of the civilized nations, and the 
smaller nations ought of right to be subject 
to the greater nations. While the German 
Empire has been illustrating in the trenches 
and in its treatment of Belgium the law of 
the forest, struggle for existence and survival 
of the strongest, democracy has been illus- 
trating in the prison camps and the hospitals 
the law of human brotherhood. And by the 
contrast the world is learning the lesson 
which it apparently could not learn either 
from the vision of the poets or the very im- 
perfect object-lesson of one very imperfectly 
developed democratic nation. 

To the question of the day, asked by some 
cynically, by some in great perplexity, Has 
God forgotten us, or is there no God ? my an- 
swer is: God is teaching the human race the 



THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST [83] 

lesson of justice, liberty, and order — the les- 
son, that is, of human brotherhood based on 
self-control and mutual respect; as William 
George taught the waifs and strays of New 
York City in the George Junior Republic, as 
Mr. Osborne wished to teach the criminals in 
the State Prison, as my teacher friend taught 
the girls in her school-room by allowing the 
pupils to learn life's lesson in life's great 
school, the school of actual experience. 

Jesus said to his disciples nearly nineteen 
hundred years ago: "The princes of the Gen- 
tiles exercise dominion over them, and they 
that are great exercise authority upon them. 
But it shall not be so among you : but whoso- 
ever will be great among you, let him be your 
minister; and whosoever will be chief among 
you let him be your servant/' These two 
ideals of government, the autocratic and the 
democratic, the pagan and the Christian, are 
engaged to-day in a life-and-death struggle 
on the battlefields of Europe, and the world 
has learned more of the principles and the 
spirit of human brotherhood in these three 
years of war, in seeing the evil wrought by 
the one and the beneficence wrought by the 
other, than it learned in all the centuries that 
preceded. 

As this paper is going to press the news 
reaches us of the revolution in Russia, the 



[84] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

abdication of the Czar, the overthrow of the 
Russian autocracy, and the liberation of the 
exiled and the imprisoned lovers of liberty. 
It is too soon to estimate aright the full sig- 
nificance of this revolution, but it is reason- 
ably certain that the old regime of irrespon- 
sible despotism will never be restored, that 
even if some representative of the old dynasty 
should be called to the throne it would not be 
as an autocrat but as a constitutional mon- 
arch, that never in the future will the rights 
and liberties of the Russian people be sub- 
ject to the whims of a cruel and corrupt 
bureaucracy. And because this revolution has 
been accomplished by the people themselves, 
their self-reliance, self-control, courage, and 
manliness have been developed as they could 
not have been developed by any supernatural 
intervention in their behalf. 

I do not, then, believe that this European 
war indicates either that there is no God or 
that he is an indifferent and a feeble God. It 
indicates that his faith in his children is so 
great and his love for them is so strong that 
he dares to leave them at times to learn in 
life's bitter struggles the real meaning and 
the real values of life. And the lesson al- 
ways has been and always will be worth all 
that it costs. 

And this lesson I would that every one 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [85] 

might learn who has ever personally experi- 
enced the sense of desolate loneliness ex- 
pressed in the cry, "My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" 

Sometimes our sins have hidden God's face 
from us: "that he will not hear?" I would 
rather say that we cannot hear. He has not 
forsaken us, but we have forsaken him. 
When Jesus bade Judas, "What thou doest 
do quickly," and Judas went out and "it was 
night," Jesus did not forsake Judas; Judas 
forsook Jesus. When our Father complies 
with an unfilial demand and gives us our in- 
heritance to spend as our self-will dictates, 
and we depart from him, and by and by we 
know the great loneliness of a disappointed 
life, there is only one remedy — a return to 
loyalty and a life of self-devotion to the 
Father's will. 

Sometimes we are wearied by overwork, 
or by overwrought and exhausted emotions, 
or by a despairing conviction that we have 
misunderstood our Father's will because we 
did not possess our Father's spirit. Then life 
no longer seems worth living and we would 
desert if we dared. So Elijah thought to re- 
store the loyalty of his Nation to Jehovah by 
putting to death the priests of Baal, and, fail- 
ing to get from an apathetic people any re- 
sponse to his undivine enthusiasm, would have 



186"] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

been glad to commit suicide, but had either 
too much conscience or too little courage. In 
such a time we had best imitate Elijah's ex- 
ample, lie down and sleep, rise up and eat, 
give our exhausted nerves a chance to recover 
their tone, and re-learn the lesson we so easily 
forget, that the Kingdom of God comes not 
with tempest, earthquake and fire, but with a 
still small voice. Then in returning and rest 
we shall be saved, in quietness and in con- 
fidence we shall recover our strength. 

In our time there are many who have iden- 
tified faith with creed, religion with theology, 
God with definitions of God. Their defini- 
tions are proved inadequate, their theology 
is darkened, their creed is shattered, and they 
feel themselves forsaken. So Job had be- 
lieved that if he were virtuous he would be 
happy; he had been virtuous and he was not 
happy. His creed proved false. In the in- 
tellectual chaos of the hour God disappeared. 
"Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; 
and backward, but I cannot perceive him ; on 
the left hand, where he doth work, but I 
cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the 
right hand that I cannot see him." The God 
whom he could not find by searching he found 
by trusting; the God whom he could not find 
without, he found within. His agnosticism 
was theological, not spiritual. He was a de- 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [87] 

vout agnostic, and his prayer, "Oh that I 
knew where I might find him! that I might 
come even to his seat" was answered when he 
found his God in the mystery of life, a God 
whose greatness is unsearchable. 

But this experience of "forsaken" may 
come to us as it came to Jesus. The Father 
may throw us on our own resources and leave 
us to ourselves: perhaps to learn how weak 
we are, perhaps to learn self-reliance, cour- 
age, independence. Ella Wheeler Wilcox's 
little poem does not give the whole truth 
about prayer, but she truly portrays one mes- 
sage which life sometimes brings to each one 
of us: 

All thine immortal powers bring into play, 
Think, act, strive, reason — then look up and pray. 

Christ sent his disciples out in couples to 
preach the Gospel apart from him. They 
learned to preach by preaching. God does 
not solve our problems or fight our battles for 
us. He inspires us to solve our own problems 
and strengthens us to fight our own battles. 
Sometimes he does this by leaving us alone, 
for so he best calls out all our powers. 

This experience of loneliness comes to all 
of us sometimes, I suppose — an experience 
when our prayers seem to get no response, 
when, as a friend once said to me, they go 



[88] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

no higher than the ceiling. This is not al- 
ways a sign of our weakness, our sin, nor of 
God's absence or indifference. Perhaps he is 
testing us to see what we can do. Perhaps 
our loneliness is a call to greater courage 
and more strenuous endeavors. Then let me 
go forward to feed the hungry, though I have 
only five loaves and two little fishes; go for- 
ward to fight the strong armed evil, though 
I have only a sling and ^ve smooth stones out 
of the brook. And let my prayer still be My 
God, though because of the gathering dark- 
ness I cannot see his form, because of the 
shouting multitude I cannot hear his voice, 
and in the tumult of my own troubled heart I 
can discern no consciousness of his presence. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [89] 



Father: we do not ask for Thy companion- 
ship, for that we know we always have, but 
we do ask that we may better understand Thy 
companionship and realize it more. There 
are times when the eternal things seem very 
real, and we are surer of the things that are 
unseen than of the things that are seen; at 
other times the eternal realities are obscure 
and seem unreal. We sail life's ocean as we 
sail the sea; sometimes bright sun and blue 
skies, sometimes storms when we cannot see 
— nay, scarce so much as a hand's-breadth 
before our eyes. Yet even then may we walk 
by faith and be sure Thou art, although we 
cannot see Thee. When Thou seemest to be 
sleeping and we wonder if Thou carest not 
whether we perish or not, still may we have 
faith in Thee. When Thy coming is not un- 
derstood and we are terrified, calm our fears 
that we may hear Thy voice saying, "It is I, 
be not afraid." When Thou seemest to have 
departed and we say to ourselves "We trusted 
this should have been He who would have de- 
livered us," walk by our side, though Thou 



[90] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

dost walk incognito, and make our hearts to 
burn again, and then reveal Thyself to us, 
and cause us to know that Thou dost never 
forget us, though we forget Thee, and never 
art absent from us., though we seem to absent 
ourselves from Thee. And if the time shall 
come when Thou dost keep silence, dost not 
answer our prayers, dost hide Thyself so that 
we cannot find Thee, dost leave us to solve 
our problems, bear our burdens, fulfill our 
tasks without Thine aid, still may we be loyal 
to Thee, count the problem one Thou hast 
given us, the burden one Thou hast permitted 
to be laid upon us, the task one Thou hast al- 
lotted to us, and summon all our wisdom, all 
our courage, all our powers to do Thy will, 
rejoicing that Thou dost repose in us such 
trust and confidence. Amen, 



VICTORY 

CHRIST CONQUEROR 
OF DEATH 



[92] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

Loud mockers in the roaring street 

Say Christ is crucified again; 
Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet 

Twice broken, His great heart in vain. 
I hear and to myself I smile 
For Christ talks with me all the while 
No angel now to roll the stone 

From off His unawaking sleep; 
In vain shall Mary watch alone, 

In vain the soldiers vigil keep. 
Yet while they deem my Lord is dead 
My eyes are on His shining head. 
Ah! never more shall Mary hear 

That voice exceeding sweet and low, 
Within the garden calling clear, 

Her Lord is gone and she must go. 
Yet all the while my Lord I meet 
In every London lane and street. 
Poor Lazarus, shall wait in vain 

And Bartimaeus still go blind; 
The healing hem shall ne'er again 

Be touched by suffering human-kind. 
Yet all the while I see them rest, 
The poor and outcast, on His breast. 
No more unto the stubborn heart 

With gentle knocking shall He plead, 
No more the mystic pity start, 

For Christ twice dead is dead indeed. 
So in the street I hear men say 
Yet Christ is with me all the day. 

Richard Le Gallienne. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [93] 



The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not 
an extraordinary event. It was an extraor- 
dinary evidence of an ordinary event. All 
men die as Christ died. All men ever since 
God breathed into man the breath of his life 
have risen from the dead as Christ rose. 
Death and resurrection are synonyms. They 
are simply different aspects of the same fact. 
They are both the separation of the spirit 
from the body. Resurrection is the upspring- 
ing of the spirit from the body. Death is 
the decay of the body when the spirit has 
left the temporary tenement. 

If I believed that the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ was an exceptional events I might have 
the difficulty in believing which is experienced 
by some of my skeptical friends. But I do 
not think it was an exceptional event. It is 
exceptional only in this respect, that some- 
how the despairing disciples had evidence of 
their Master's continuing life which banished 
their despair, transformed their characters, 
and endowed them with new life. Did the 
spirit of the Master return to reanimate the 
body which it had left? Or did the disem- 
bodied spirit appear to the unsealed eyes of 



[94] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

the disciples? I do not know. There are 
some incidents narrated in the Gospels which 
indicate one conclusion, some incidents which 
indicate the other. It is not material to de- 
termine which opinion is correct. 

But somehow the disciples came to believe 
that their Master was not dead, but living; 
not gone away, but still their leader, their 
teacher, their master. 

That belief I share with them. If it had 
not been for that belief, Christianity would 
have died on the cross and been buried in the 
tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. With their 
Master's death hope died and the disciples 
planned to go back to their fishing. It was 
with difficulty that they were convinced that 
he was risen from the dead. At first the re- 
ports of his resurrection seemed to them like 
women's tales. With the conviction that their 
Master still lived they became new men. 
Cowards before, they were endowed with 
courage. Dumb before, they spoke. They 
had been awed by the ecclesiastics whom, now 
they defied. Their theme was not the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, new ethics, a spiritualized 
Ten Commandments. It was a gospel, a glad 
tidings. The Deliverer had come; he would 
emancipate the world; he would bring in the 
hoped-for kingdom of God, the kingdom 
which would be righteousness and peace and 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [95] 

universal welfare. Their faith in the risen 
and living leader changed the Jewish holiday 
of the seventh day into the Christian holiday 
of the first day of the week. It changed the 
character of the day from a day of rest to a 
day of inspiration. It changed it from a He- 
brew ceremonial to a world gala day. 

It did more. It changed for the disciples 
their conception of death. The graves were 
empty, the heavens were populous. One dis- 
ciple heard in imagination his martyred com- 
panions singing, "Blessing, and glory, and 
wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and 
power, and might, be unto our God for ever 
and ever." Another saw these companions 
risen from their resting-places, looking down 
upon their late companions on the earth, and 
cheering them on in their progress toward the 
goal — the kingdom of God. Death lost its 
sting. The grave was no longer victor. Death 
and the grave became, not the end of life, but 
the beginning. The tombs of the pagans 
were inscribed only with memories: "She was 
a good wife" ; "He was a brave soldier." The 
tombs of the Christians were inscribed with 
symbols of hope: the anchor, the broken egg- 
shell, the sculptured angel. 

Nor was this all. Love received a new in- 
spiration, life a new significance. Philan- 
thropists were few and philanthropy was 



[96] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

paralyzed in pagan Rome. Mortals found it 
hard to work and to suffer for the betterment 
of those who would not outlast the century. 
But now there were no mortals. And im- 
mortals found it easy to work and to suffer 
for immortals. Christianity was born, not at 
the crucifixion, but at the resurrection. Eas- 
ter, not Christmas, is the true anniversary of 
Christendom. 

What our faith in the resurrection of Jesus, 
with all that it involves and implies, has done 
for us, his followers, is indicated by a picture 
of what disbelief in that resurrection involves. 
The necessary implications of that disbelief 
are eloquently protrayed by Arthur Clough 
in a poem 1 too long for me to quote in its 
entirety. Three verses selected from that 
poem must here suffice: 

Eat, drink, and play, and think that this is bliss: 
There is no heaven but this; 

There is no hell, 
Save eartli, which serves the purpose doubly well, 

Seeing it visits still 
With equalest apportionment of ill 
Both good and bad alike, and brings to one same 
dust 

The unjust and the just 
With Christ, who is not risen. 



1 Arthur H. Clough's Poems, "Easter Day." 
Naples, 1849. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST [97] 

Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved: 
Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope 
We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, 
And most beliefless, that had most believed. 
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; 
As of the unjust, also of the just — 
Yea, of that Just One too! 
It is the one sad Gospel that is true — 
Christ is not risen! 

Here, on our Easter Day 
We rise, we come, and lo! we find him not, 
Gardener nor other, on the sacred spot: 
Where they have laid him there is none to say; 
No sound, nor in, nor out — no word 
Of where to seek the dead or meet* the living Lord. 
There is no glistening of an angel's wings, 
There is no voice of heavenly clear behest: 
Let us go hence, and think upon these things 

In silence, which is best. 

Is he not risen? No — 

But lies and molders low? 
Christ is not risen?" 



To "eat, drink, and play, and think that 
this is bliss" seems to us who believe in the 
resurrection foolish as well as vicious. Fool- 
ish, too, to judge the meaning and merits of 
life from this little earthly section of a life 
that is imperishable. When our loved ones 
spring from the bodies they have occupied, 
as the emancipated bird springs from the 
opened door of its cage, our souls are not be- 
reaved. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" — yes ! 
but also "the spirit to God who gave it." We 
look not down into the grave, but up to the 



[98] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

companionship which surrounds us and in- 
spires us ; not backward to the memory of a 
love now lost, but forward to meeting with 
our loved ones who are not dead and cannot 
die. Our Christ does not lie and molder low. 
He lives, our invisible Leader and Companion, 
who brings us a courage greater than our 
own with which to meet the dangers and dif- 
ficulties encountered in our brief campaign 
to gain ourselves and give to the world his 
spirit of love, service, and sacrifice. 



THE LAST DAYS OP JESUS CHRIST [99] 



draper 

Father, to some of us at all times, to most 
of us sometimes, the story of Thy Son's resur- 
rection seems, as it seemed to his disciples, an 
idle tale : the earthquake, the opened door, the 
empty tomb, the angel visitors, the- appearing 
and disappearing Chiast are so remote in 
time and so foreign to our common experi- 
ences. But we know that the Spirit of love, 
service and sacrifice which was in him is not 
dead but living, working within us, as our 
Saviour, our Leader, our Companion. He ful- 
fills his promise: he does not leave us com- 
fortless : he comes to us. Then we know him, 
for he dwells with us and is in us. Then we 
know that he is living, for in him we also live. 
Father, we ask not that we may see his hands 
or touch his wounded side. We ask that in 
our experience his blessing may be realized: 
that though we have not seen him, yet we may 
believe in him. We ask no celestial vision, no 
angel interpreters, no Christ in human form: 
these would not suffice our needs nor satisfy 
our desires. We ask that we may know him 
and the power of his resurrection, being 



[100] THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST 

made partakers in his life and in his sacrifi- 
cial death. We ask that we may keep his new 
commandment and love one another as he 
has loved us, and in thus sharing his self- 
sacrificing love may know that we are with 
him and that he is with us. And this fellow- 
ship with Thy risen and living Christ we ask 
in order that he may see in us the fruit of his 
sacrifice and be satisfied. Amen. 



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